Conventionally, for example, an ink ribbon winding device of a heat transfer type printer is known. Set in the printer is a ribbon cassette which contains an unused ink ribbon as a tape-like long material and a reel around which as a portion of the ink ribbon is used, the used ink ribbon portion is wound. The ink ribbon winding device engages with the reel around which the used ink ribbon is wound to transfer power from a drive source via a clutch mechanism to the winding reel. The clutch mechanism transfers drive torque by a frictional force generated by a press load of a spring to the winding reel and runs idle when the winding resistance exceeds a predetermined limit. By this arrangement, the clutch mechanism absorbs an increase in the tensile strength of the ink ribbon due to an increase in the diameter of the ink ribbon as the ink ribbon is wound and maintains the winding force of separating from printing paper the ink ribbon which adheres to the printing paper by the melting and transfer of the ink.
When the used ink ribbon portion is wound in the heat transfer type printer, resistance to separation of the ink ribbon from the printing paper varies depending on the density of the printing and the width of the ink ribbon. Thus, for example, a required slip torque of the clutch mechanism (a limit torque beyond which a slippage of the clutch mechanism occurs against the frictional force) must decrease as the width of the ink ribbon decreases and vise versa.
However, as described above, there is a probability that a drive torque with which a wider ink ribbon is wound will become insufficient because the slip torque of the clutch mechanism is constant. If the slip torque and hence the drive torque are increased to avoid such insufficient drive torque, the drive torque would be excessive for a narrower ink ribbon, so that the ink ribbon may be broken during its winding.
In order to solve this problem, before shippage of tape winding devices which include respective clutch mechanisms from a factory, a try-and-error selection method is employed which includes actually giving the winding test of the winding devices in wider and narrower ink ribbons in winding and selecting only winding devices which include respective clutch mechanisms having an appropriate slip torque. For the clutch mechanism which brought no good result of the testing, the respective components of the clutch mechanism involved in the generation of the frictional force are replaced with other appropriate ones and the resulting clutch mechanism is then actually tested again, which is very troublesome.